A slightly later start today and a bit of morning rain. 10am found us on the train, heading to Tokyo station. Surprisingly, there were loads of commuters on the train with us, and bustling through the stations. It seemed a pretty late hour to start work.

First stop was the Pokemon Centre DX and Pokemon Cafe.

The day started with a disappointment as we discovered that we’d have to miss out on the Pokemon cafe. We’d been told we could probably walk up and get in by putting our names down for a later time. Unfortunately, it was really pre-booking only. They told us we could queue for the possibility of getting in at 1.30 (stand in line for 3 hours) but that was a hard pass for us. Corwin was a bit disappointed, but Maeve probably wouldn’t have been able to eat anything anyway.

We headed into the Pokemon Centre itself and the shopping began…

Shopping completed we walked back to Tokyo station and descended into the lower levels to look at Character Street (a “street” of shops with a character theme – another Pokemon centre, Studio Ghibli, Moomins, Snoopy…).

By this point we were pretty hungry so we headed to “Ramen Street” – also under Tokyo Station – for lunch. We managed to locate the place that I’d heard had a gluten-free ramen and we successfully ordered our lunches from the machine. It was a real relief to sit down and take a rest for a half hour or so.

We came out of Shibuya station right near the famous crossing. Before we could try it out though, we wanted to look at the statue of Hachiko. “This Akita dog came to Shibuya Station every day to meet his master, a professor, returning from work. After the professor died in 1925, Hachikō continued to come to the station daily until his own death nearly 10 years later. The story became legendary and a small statue was erected in the dog’s memory in front of Shibuya Station.” But when we went to have a look there was a little bonus:

These cats were very cosy and were drawing quite a crowd.

Said to be the busiest crossing in the world, we didn’t find it too bad when we were there. I imagine it’s pretty chaotic at peak commuter times.

Next up we went to some shops that sell manga and anime (Mandarake and Animate):

Next up was Shibuya. Specifically, Takeshita Street. Lots of interesting shops, narrow cobblestoned street and loads of people. Bear in mind the following photos were taken on a Monday.

First we went to the Mame Shiba cafe to get a time to come back – 5.45pm was the next available time. And then it was off to Totti Candy Factory for rainbow candy floss. I’ll let the photos tell the story:

Then down a nice quiet street…

… to Kiddyland for some toy shopping.

Found these stylish hats for Wesley – I’m sure he’ll love them.

After Maeve spent up large it was time to head back to the Mame Shiba cafe for our half hour slot. The dogs were not particularly interested in their human visitors for the most part, though we did get the occasional pat in.

Then one little guy decided he wanted to climb onto Corwin’s lap. They snuggled for a while…

And then a bigger little dog decided he wanted the lap the smaller little dog had chosen, and a brawl broke out on Corwin’s lap. 😊

Finally, it was time to say goodbye.

After that we were pretty tired. We came out of the cafe and the rain was really coming down so we decided to treat ourselves to a taxi. Which was actually quite affordable. We finished the day with konbini food again. Just as fresh and delicious as Sunday night.